First Ebola case in Senegal, five more states at risk of outbreak spread

West African state of Senegal has become the region's fifth country to confirm a case of the deadly Ebola virus that has killed more than 1,500 people with the WHO warning that five more states are at risk for spread of the outbreak.

A university student
from neighbouring Guinea first asked for medical treatment in
Dakar on Tuesday but gave no sign of Ebola, Health Minister Awa
Marie Coll Seck told reporters. The student was quarantined the
next day after scientists in Guinea notified Senegalese
authorities that they are unaware of whereabouts of one person
who had had contact with sick people, Seck said.

Seck told the press that the student's condition is
“satisfactory,” after being tested positive with the
deadly virus, but it is still unclear when or how the new victim
came to Senegal after the country sealed off its border with
Guinea last week. The World Health Organisation has been alerted
of the new case.

Meanwhile, some 160 people are being monitored in Nigeria’s Port
Harcourt after a doctor died from the virus on Thursday.

The Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa began last year in
Guinea. Since then, the disease has spread to Liberia, Sierra
Leone and Nigeria and now Senegal. Five more countries were
identified as at risk of contracting the virus, the United
Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

“The following
countries share land borders or major transportation connections
with the affected countries and are therefore at risk for spread
of the Ebola outbreak: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire,
Guinea-Bissau, Mali, and Senegal,” the agency said, adding
it will aid the new states with “surveillance, preparedness
and response plan.”

The Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report 1 is the first update
issued by the WHO following Thursday's release of an Ebola
response roadmap that aims to stop the spread of the virus within
six to nine months. According to the latest UN statistic almost
40 percent of the reported cases have occurred within the past
three weeks, and warned that eventually 20,000 people could be
infected.

“There are serious problems with case management and
infection prevention and control,” the report said. “The
situation is worsening in Liberia and Sierra Leone.”

As individual African states battle the virus, the health
minister Miatta Kargbo of Sierra Leone has been dismissed by the
country's president “to create a conducive environment for
efficient and effective handling of the Ebola outbreak,” that has
killed more than 400 people in that country alone.

The latest official number of Ebola cases in Guinea, Liberia,
Nigeria, and Sierra Leone stands at 3,069, with over 1,552
deaths, making this the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded, WHO
said.

The head of French Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Mego Terziam,
believes the WHO doesn’t have enough resources to stop Ebola from
spreading.

“I am extremely pessimistic if there is not a substantial
international mobilisation,” Terziam said.
“Organisations like the WHO and MSF will be not capable to
mobilise additional human resources, additional logistics in
order to control the epidemic.”

In order to get ready for the worst possible scenario and help
those already suffering, researchers are moving forward with
trials of experimental Ebola vaccines, but the first results are
unlikely before the year end.